Senza Fili Sparring Partners

Adrian Scrase, independent consultant at EA Consult Services, has been deeply involved in the evolution of wireless standards throughout many Gs at ETSI and, as you may expect, is now working on the evolution to 6G. What can we learn from 3G, 4G and 5G, to avoid the mistakes of the past? How can we find a sustainable innovation trajectory that is grounded in realistic expectations for what new technology can deliver, how much opera...

This is a podcast I recorded with Claudia Bacco Editor-in-Chief at Global Airspace Radar on what I learned about drones during a recent trip to China for the Huawei analyst event.

This is the description of the podcast, “Telecommunications supporting drones, with a twist”:

Monica Paolini, Principal, Senza Fili, joined our editor-in-chief Claudia Bacco to discuss telecommunications supporting drones. A twist is mentioned in the titl...

Wireless security is becoming increasingly challenging to manage due to growing geopolitical tensions, the rise of sophisticated tools and profitable targets, and the potential for AI to make attacks easier and more effective.

In this conversation with Silke Holtmanns, Telecommunication Security Expert at Blue Hour Consulting Oy, we delve beyond the stats to discuss how operators manage wireless security and how they can enhance th...

AI will have a transformative impact across all elements in telecom networks, and that includes transport. Yet, most of the attention these days is on the RAN, the core and data center infrastructure.

In this conversation with Kristian Toivo, Executive Director at TIP, we tried to remedy this and focused on how AI is changing the transport requirements and how the ecosystem and infrastructure will have to evolve to meet them. As AI...

AI is everywhere, RAN included. But many questions remain. What role does it take within the RAN? Where can it help and how? How do we transition from an initial, limited use of AI, to reach L4 automation with a native-AI RAN?

Nirlay Kundu, Head of Technology Standards, IMDEA Networks Institute, explores all these topics and more, combining the experience from his work at Verizon in the US and the research he is currently doing at ...

CBRS is gaining traction in industrial and, a bit more slowly, in enterprise networks and some of the complexity and limitations of the initial CBRS have been addressed. Yet, recently, we have seen attempts to turn CBRS into another full-power licensed band. This would give mobile operators exclusive access to the spectrum, as they do with other cellular licensed bands, and enterprises would no longer be able to use the spectrum wi...

Not everybody working in telecom is an engineer. For one, I am not (my college degree is in Philosophy, and my PhD is in Cognitive Science/Neuroscience), and I believe that this was an advantage as it allowed me initially to look at the technology from the outside.

In this discussion with Linda Ligios, Principal Innovation Solutions Consultant at Digital Catapult (spoiler: she is also not an engineer), we talked about how a non-tel...

Wi-Fi in the 6 GHz band is rapidly expanding through increased adoption (where allowed) and availability (in countries that have now opened or are opening the band to unlicensed use). Yet, there has been speculation that the US may roll back Wi-Fi availability and allocate part of the band to cellular.

Who else could be better to guide us through all this than Kevin Robinson, the CEO at the Wi-Fi Alliance? We discuss what could pos...

AI is here to stay and will become more pervasive with time. But how will it penetrate telecom networks and organizations?

Azita Arvani and I explored this question along multiple dimensions. Is it going to be centralized or at the edge? Do we need GPUs at the edge? How quick should the transition from AI as a tool to AI-native networks be? How will sovereignty shape the adoption of AI? How aggressively should we push AI adoption? ...

AI carries profound implications for national, infrastructure, and personal security, with today’s geopolitical tensions adding further complexity. AI poses new challenges not only to governments and society, but also to telecom regulators, vendors, service providers, and the broader ecosystem.

In this episode, I speak with Chris Jefferson from Advai, where he works to make AI safe and reliable, and to identify and mitigate potenti...

All laptops have Wi-Fi, and yet not many have 5G connectivity. Why is it so? Giovanni Severini, Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft, told us how and why this happened, and how this may be changing, especially in the enterprise space.

Tethering to the phone is a common workaround, but it limits performance. This may change with the increased adoption of eSIM, which makes it easier to connect to cellular networks. But Giovan...

How many connected enterprises do not have Wi-Fi? Hardly any. Yet, there are many different ways to use Wi-Fi within the enterprise. And to decide whether Wi-Fi is sufficient or if in-building cellular networks, such as CBRS, are also needed.

I talked with Bart Giordano, President at Ruckus Networks, about how the role of Wi-Fi in the enterprise keeps evolving, with the evolution of Wi-Fi technology and access to the 6GHz band.

Mor...

Complain as much as you want about 3GPP or IEEE — they’ve given us global standards that have been essential to the adoption, low cost, and ease of use of cellular and Wi-Fi.

I spoke with Sebastian Barros, Managing Director at Circles, about the future of global standards and shared access to new technologies. Are we on the verge of losing this? Geopolitical divisions are pushing us toward building barriers, making it harder to sus...

Wireless infrastructure can be expensive to build, and the business case is difficult to make in indoor and digital divide environments. Sharing the infrastructure is a powerful and efficient way to reduce costs and encourage deployments, but so far, it has been difficult to do because the business models and incentives were not there.

I talked with Sarah Aberg, Chief Legal Officer at Helium, about how decentralized physical infras...

We all use Wi-Fi at home. It is so pervasive that people no longer think of having a broadband connection at home; instead, they will tell you they “have Wi-Fi.”

What is talked about less is that the Wi-Fi connection is getting better and more secure. I covered this gap with Tiago Rodrigues, President and CEO at the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA). As the number of devices and the traffic loads increase, we need more capabilities...

A recurring challenge in wireless is how to get new technology to the market and generate revenue. We are good at deploying new technologies, but struggle to monetize them sufficiently to profit from the investment made to deploy them.

This has happened with 4G, is happening with 5G and is likely to happen with AI and 6G, and it is not because the technology is not good enough. What creates the disconnect? Do we need to find new wa...

Why is it taking so long for telecom service providers to get enterprises into the fold and deliver the connectivity and services they need? Caroline Chan, VP and GM of Telco AI, Network, and Edge Group at Intel, has worked closely with enterprises across various verticals for a long time, and shares her insights on the challenges of reaching the enterprise and how to address them.

We talked about the need for a rich and well-synch...

As the world moves towards hyper-connectivity, network APIs are emerging as critical enablers of innovation across industries. In this Sparring Partners, Sameh Yamani, CTO at VIAVI Solutions, will explore the driving forces behind network APIs and how they are transforming the telecommunications landscape.

- The driving forces behind network APIs: core technological, software-defined networking (SDN), automation, and the emerging 5...

This episode is a special one for me. David Cleevely – serial entrepreneur, investor, policy adviser, and founder of Analysys and Cambridge Wireless (just to name a couple) – was the person who hired me straight out of school, with no telecoms experience whatsoever, and gave me the opportunity to pursue my passion for the industry. It’s the kind of serendipity he explores in his new book.

But this podcast isn’t about me – it’s abou...